It’s all the rage now, and New York has been overcome with it. Let’s begin with a definition of what socialism is. From my Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary, (1700 pages) which has exhaustive definitions: “Socialism: Any of various theories or a system of the ownership and operation of the means of production and distribution by society or the community rather than by private individuals, with all members of society or community sharing in the work and production. The stage of society in Marxist doctrine, coming between the capitalist stage and the communist stage, in which private ownership of the means of production and distribution have been eliminated.” Wow!
Then we must go to what happens under socialism, which the U.K. was mired in for a decade or so, until they finally elected Margaret Thatcher, who handily got the U.K. back on its feet. Maggie Thatcher and Ronnie Reagan were close buddies, and shared the same beliefs. She said once, which is the almost perfect definition of socialism: “The trouble with socialism is that eventually you run out of other people’s money.”
It was the brave new ‘Americans,’ who decided that the British King George had taxed and governed far too much, and they decided to get out of the British web of monarchy, which was socialism perfected, with the monarchy deciding just about everything. King George couldn’t even speak English! With the aid of the French, we won our independence, and that became the birthplace of capitalism, whose definition is, from the same dictionary: “An economic system in which most of the means of production and distributorship, such as land, factories, communications and transportation systems are privately owned and operated to produce profits.”
From a column I wrote a couple of months ago: “Without a profit, nothing works, and government knows nothing about profit.”
From the bravado and determination of the few primitive capitalists who wanted to own their own land, businesses, and factories, we became the fortress of, and marvelous example of what freedom and capitalism can do. The U.K. has tried its best to copy our capitalism over the last 250 years, but the British Government still owns the railroads and broadcasting (BBC) systems, which its citizens pay a yearly tax on every TV and radio in the UK. And they still worship the monarchy, its king and royal family.
If you want a comparison between The United States and the U.K., the British Labor Party, is a close duplication to our Democrat Party, which has gotten a rather disgusting foot-hold in New York.
America became the world’s primary source of wealth, invention, freedom, production, distribution, medicine, care, health, Nobel Prizes, and all which we hold dear. If our capitalistic system resulted in the inventions of such things as mass production, steel, elevators, radio, television, computers, airplanes. electricity, light bulbs, motion pictures, space exploration, and a million other things, and their founders and inventors became wealthy, so what? These brilliant men such as Sam Walton who was the father of Walmart, and became wealthy, they did it because they were smarter than most, and had to invent or discover, as it was in their genes, and their brains couldn’t be throttled.
These discoverers of mass production (Henry Ford), the steel plow (John Deere) elevators (Otis), and the list goes on, provided hundreds of millions of jobs, homes, health, transport, and convenience we all love. In 1831, Matthew Baldwin built his first steam locomotive, and eventually built over 70,000 locomotives in his huge Philadelphia factory. In 1857 Elisha Graves Otis invented an elevator safety brake, and soon invented a passenger elevator. Otis became the largest elevator manufacturer in the world, and the Empire State Building in 1933 had several Otis elevators. My local hospital has Otis elevators. These men became rich, but provided millions of well paying jobs with retirement packages. George Pullman not only invented the railroad sleeping car, but built an entire town called “Pullman” near Chicago to house his thousands of employees. In 1883, Bernard Kroger built a little grocery store in Cincinnati Ohio, and was smart enough to carry it forward, till today there are over 2800 Korgers under a lot of different names. Wall Mart has more stores, but Kroger is still the largest pure grocery chain in America. Me hate capitalism and want to go to socialism? Who would provide the jobs and inventions?
Government welfare, which is socialism on a grand scale, has more employees than private industry, and like all socialistic outfits, have destroyed its adherents and beneficiaries, who have loved to eat and at the public trough, rather than work and provide for themselves. Oink. FDR invented socialism in 1933. The public trough gets larger and more expensive each day, and is responsible for inflation and the dollar’s losing over 95% of its purchasing power.
To quote from a book I wrote 35 years ago, titled “I Hold These Truths,” on Pages 29 and 30, I wrote: “America was made great by having all the things socialism takes away. Socialism loves failure. Socialism is government of the failures, by the failures, and for the failures. The achievers which socialists hate achieved, not because it is or was their duty, but a mere outlet for their brain power and creativity. They merely loved to do it, and the prosperity they provided, is a by-product of their aptitude, energy, drive, and intelligence. Socialism’s stated goal of raising social classes has the opposite effect. Trying to raise social classes is like trying to fill a cracked swimming pool with water. The minute you turn the hose off, the water will go down to the cracked place. Socialism is taking everyone down to the poverty level of that cracked pool. Socialism plunders private property and profit, which was the cornerstone of America from its humble beginnings. Socialism places power in the hands of the inept, undeserving, and non-achieving. Socialism creates poverty and spends billions trying to eliminate it. The more spent, the more poverty is created.”
The huge wealth created by those great inventors, such as Andrew Carnegie, who built and donated hundreds of libraries to large cities such as Phoenix Arizona and tiny Silverton Colorado, who each have one of them. Carnegie loved pipe organs and donated 6,000 of them to various churches and meeting halls. He also built Carnegie Hall in New York City, which has some of the best acoustics of any hall in the world, except perhaps the Mormon Tabernacle in Salt Lake City.
New York has already seen mass exports of its richest, tax-paying, job providing, inventive class move to low tax states. Socialist cities also have suffered the wealthy, tax-paying residents, getting out and moving to Florida and Texas which have no income taxes. “Sanctuary Cities,” as they are called, have no concept of what made America great, and they don’t seem to even care. Socialism sounds so wonderful to the stupid, but stupidity is impossible to fix.
-Don Stott don@coloradogold.com